15:30 - 17:00
Room: Aston Webb – Lecture Theatre WG5
Stream: Open Stream
Chair/s:
Luke Melchiorre
Fluid Identities and the Contemporary Student Protests in South Africa: A Case Study on the University of Pretoria
Kgothatso Mokgele
Center for Social Change, Johannesburg
University of Johannesburg - Department of Sociology, Johannesburg

In post-apartheid South Africa, there is limited empirical and theoretical research on the student movement that explores multiple identities. The vast majority of literature on social movements generally focus on a collective rather than seeking to understand movements through a personal identity lens. Literature exploring individual characteristics is important as it will provide insight into how gender, race, class, sexuality and language shape the movement. Intersectionality provides a holistic framework to explore the relationship between activists’ identities, how different identity characteristics interact in people’s lives and the impact this has on social interaction. Intersectionality is also a useful framework with which to understand the postmodern project of conceptualising multiple and shifting identities. Moreover, this framework breaks down different identity markers and explores the intersection between them. These identity markers highlight the characteristics that have meaning for us and the society in which we exist. This paper will focus on the contemporary student movement at the University of Pretoria (UP). The study will draw on intersectionality to explore the dimensions of identities that students have, and how they view changes to these as a result of being part of the protests. The central research question of this study is: In what ways have the recent student movements at the University of Pretoria shaped student’s activists’ identities?


Reference:
We-OS13 Student Activism-P-003
Presenter/s:
Kgothatso Mokgele
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Aston Webb – Lecture Theatre WG5
Chair/s:
Luke Melchiorre
Date:
Wednesday, 12 September
Time:
16:00 - 16:15
Session times:
15:30 - 17:00